A World at War and War of the Worlds

There can be an exhilaration in watching chaos unfold in front of you and disrupt the ordinary. This is why disaster movies have been exciting and why action movies place someone in the middle of the action. For over a century, the genre of invasion literature that began in comfort before World War I for a bored audience seeking a thrill has continued that trend. But that genre changes dramatically when an actual invasion and the feeling of being unsafe is still entirely too fresh in the collective minds of the population. The films Independence Day and War of the Worlds are two examples of invasion media but can be analyzed very differently in the context of the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. These films came out in 1996 and 2005, respectively, and with only 9 years separating them, they show two vastly different Americas.

A scene in Independence Day begins with excited New Yorkers welcoming the extraterrestrials to the city and ends with the Empire State Building being destroyed, but the feeling conveyed is one of awe instead of horror. A similar scene in the same city but a different film shows Tom Cruise running through panicking people as they are instantly cremated around him, the ash getting in his eyes and hair and making War of the Worlds look more like a Ground Zero video. How do these two scenes in similar films reconcile the difference in tone and the difference in rhetoric that separates them? How can we analyze this to find out more about the society that created these works and consumed them, despite their relative closeness to us?

The concept of invasion literature began in 1871 with the short tale The Battle of Dorking, by George Tomkyns Chesney, a fantastical tale that tells of the war that ended the British Empire and the foreign invaders who are never quite named, other than that they spoke a Germanic language (Gailor.) This tale and the many after it that it inspired was terribly exciting to the British citizens reading it, who had not yet experienced any wars of any worlds and thus felt that the idea was fantastical. As scholars have noted, this style of media would be popular until World War I, when it would hit a little too close to home for many (Gailor.) Invasion media will continue in patterns similar to this, which would even bring about the famous work of early science fiction by H. G. Wells, War of the Worlds, first published in 1897, changing the invaders from coming from a different land to coming from a different planet entirely. This story has endured, being adapted in many different iterations throughout the decades as society adapts the invasion media for their current values and fears.

The original 1897 War of the Worlds as it was written, serialized originally in Pearson’s Magazine in the United Kingdom, tells the story of Martians invading Victorian London and has been interpreted to ask the question of how a superpower would react if a bigger imperialist came knocking (Pintér.) Wells had once remarked to family that the plot came up while reading about the British imperialists completely wiping out indigenous Tasmanians in colonial genocide, and asking the question “ What would happen if Martians did to Britain what the British had done to the Tasmanians?” (Pintér.) In that, this early invasion story was meant more as a story of hubris, but the basic tale can be adapted endlessly with the same basic premise and the idea of an invasion giving a motivation for a society.

Critiquing previous invasion stories can show what audiences feared when they were adapted. For example, another infamous adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds by Orson Welles in a radio format was made to sound like an authentic radio news broadcast. While the panic that was allegedly caused by this event is disputed, the fears displayed by the public by the tale still remain evident. In the late 1930s, the world was dealing with the Great Depression, growing tensions in the European theatre, and the rise of nationalism (Jones.) The average American may have already been on edge, and a terrorist attack in December of 1941 on Pearl Harbor would show that invasion fear realized shortly after. These fears are shown not only in the way Welles chose to adapt the story for the modern audience, but also how some audience members may have reacted to it. The next time this story would be adapted would be in 1953 at the height of the McCarthyism and the beginning of the Cold War, with similarly predicable effects on the story.

However, in 1996, the world was a very, very different place. America in particular was comfortable in their position in the world and the average American was bored and had little experience with horrific and national tragedies like they would experience in a short few years. Blissfully ignorant and blissfully bored, they flocked to the theatres for disaster and action movies, and Independence Day, by Roland Emmerich, was one of those blockbusters that scratched that itch for destruction and excitement. They may not have realized they were craving that same invasion literature their great grandparents enjoyed before the world wars, but in the same vein as the intentions behind the original The Battle of Dorking, it was there for the bored population wondering what it would be like if the superpower of the world were knocked to their knees. What is perhaps most striking about watching and analyzing the film now with the lens of the modern day is the lack of reaction from many characters who have experienced devastating loss or witnessed extreme destruction. An average American audience had not seen things like the Empire State Building being decimated in their actual life before. It was more exciting than terrifying. In Independence Day, viewers watch as Los Angeles, New York City, and Washington D.C. are simultaneously destroyed in CGI filled fiery explosions caused by alien invaders. It’s implied that this takes place across the world in the largest population centers at the same moment. In the span of moments, billions die. The film doesn’t so much mark their death as they do the loss of the White House, an iconic building and a symbol.

A news anchor in the background urges listeners not to fire their guns at the massive spacecrafts in the sky, lest they accidentally set off “an interstellar war.” Groups of people gather with signs to try to welcome the extraterrestrials. We expect to see characters wanting vengeance after the huge loss of life, but instead we see laughter and jokes as air force pilots leave to attack the crafts mere moments after their genocide. The visual rhetoric displayed is one of action and strength. This is an invasion story of a population who is used to coming out on top of every altercation, that is used to being portrayed as the paragon of good in the world. In the conclusion, the United States is the hero, making their day of celebration a global one.

Days of celebration would quickly turn into ash in the mouths of Americans just five years later, however, when terrorists from the middle east coordinated an attack on American soil, destroying symbols of the United States’ wealth and power like the Pentagon and World Trade Center. While they didn’t come from beyond the stars, the invasion felt all too real, and the symbols destroyed were watched by every pair of eyes in the country as they came down in a pillar of smoke. The loss of life was only in the thousands instead of billions, if you only count those on the day itself, but the impact and mourning was monumental compared to what is shown in Independence Day. Instead of spectacular explosions and action stars running from them, we saw the debris and ash covering the streets. We saw bodies littering the ground from people who tried to escape their fate. As a collective population, we had a huge traumatic experience that made the idea of an invasion, the idea of destruction of symbols sound not so fun after all.

Steven Spielberg saw this and wished to make another adaptation of the classic invasion tale. While Independence Day tells the story of the entire world fighting off Alien invaders, War of the Worlds from 2005 is on a smaller scale in its narrative. "I wanted this to be a very personal story about a family fleeing for its life," Spielberg said, describing his movie set in the same city that only recently lost two buildings from its skyline. A reluctant father must care for his two children in the middle of an alien invasion. But this one feels different than the one in Independence Day. There are no triumphant Air Force pilots. We watch the protagonist get covered in reminiscent ash and debris as the tripods rise and begin to disintegrate every human in sight. As they run, the teenage boy screams about wanting revenge for what they did, for what he’s seen. The ten-year-old girl watches in horror as hundreds of bodies float down the river. This is the true cost of invasion literature.

In war there are casualties and media often likes to make us forget that. Vietnam’s filming of the war showed audiences the atrocities that were previously so far away from their comfortable continent. The terrorist attacks on 9/11 showed previously sheltered Americans what invasion looked like, and they didn’t like it.

Film critic Lindsay Ellis says that there was nearly a sense of cultural amnesia surrounding War of the World (2005.) When the film first came out, it was met with heavy criticism and a lot of backlash. The imagery went too far (Ellis.) This visual rhetoric was directly in parallel to the images they’d only just seen on their television screens, live. Spielberg intended it that way, hoping to capture that visceral, horrific, uncomfortable feeling (Breznican.) While the audiences of 2005 may have found it in poor taste or found it too close to home like the invasion literature consumers during WWI, WWII, and other traumatic times of invasion have done the same. In 2020, the film is gaining new appreciation as an exploration of this invasion media with a lens of the melancholy in post-9/11 America.

Another uncomfortable truth that the analysis of these two films can bring to the surface is that of incorrect predictions of humanity. Emmerich puts forth an optimistic tale of humanity working together without hostility to face their common enemy. He shows everyone helping everyone as they attempt to survive the invasion from extraterrestrials. Americans saw a lot of ugliness in the 9 years between these films, as their idea of their place in the world as beloved was shattered. The hatred for Americans on the global stage was never more evident than when Americans realized people would give their lives just to hurt them. In War of the Worlds, Spielberg explores this, as the protagonist not only has to protect his children from the threat of extraterrestrials, but also the threat of their fellow man as they fight for survival. Ray, the protagonist, is even driven to kill a man to protect his daughter at one point in the narrative, asking the audience if they would be willing to do the same.

In a post-9/11 world, questions like this are more frequent than anyone in 1996 thought they would be. The most striking image from Independence Day, that of the White House being destroyed by the alien invaders, conveys a sense of helplessness that Americans were not used to feeling. Images of the World Trade Center burning can have a similar rhetoric to them, showing a burning American symbol. Meanwhile, if you were to take a photo of Tom Cruise, covered in the dust and ashes of the initial attack from the tripods in War of the Worlds and compare it to those near Ground Zero on Sept. 11, you would again feel a similar visceral feeling, but this time with intent.

This illustrates the difference of the society we live in now compared to the one that we had in the mid-nineties. Our society knows death, fear, and horror more intimately than that one did and the idea of an invasion story takes an entirely new meaning. Society will continue to evolve and change. One may even posit that society post COVID19 will be a different one than the one that came before it. What could a future invasion literature tale look like?

H.G. Wells originally wrote War of the Worlds with the intention of exploring what might happen if Martians did to Britain what Britain did to the Tasmanians (Pintér.) Future adaptations may ask questions of Americans that the population is not comfortable or prepared to consider. Genocide of indigenous populations, atrocities to minorities, colonialism, the U.S. is no stranger to these sins. The rhetoric of invasion literature gives a glimpse into hubris as well as guilt. “This isn't a war," says a military character in Wells’ book as they try in vein to kill the Martians. "It never was a war, any more than there's war between man and ants.”(Wells.) In the end, it is the smallest and most insignificant creatures on earth, bacteria, germs, viruses, etc that ends up saving the day. Let’s hope that’s a lesson we can bring into 2021.

Works Cited

Breznican, Anthony. Spielberg's Family Values. 23 June 2005, usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2005-06-23-spielberg_x.htm.

Eller, Claudia. Hollywood Executives Rethink What Is Off Limits. 14 Sept. 2001, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-sep-14-mn-45730-story.html.

Ellis, Lindsay. Movies, Patriotism, and Cultural Amnesia: Tracing Pop Culture's Relationship to 9/11. 9 Sept. 2016, www.vox.com/2016/9/9/12814898/pop-culture-response-to-9-11.

Emmerich, Roland, director. Independence Day. 20th Century Fox, 1996.

Gailor, Denis. “‘Wells's War of the Worlds’, the 'Invasion Story' and Victorian Moralism.” Critical Survey, vol. 8, no. 3, 1996, pp. 270–276. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41556021. Accessed 20 Aug. 2020.

Jones, Terry. "A War Imagined": Invasion Literature. 26 July 2018, www.ool.co.uk/blog/a-war-imagined-invasion-literature/.

Spielberg, Steven, director. War of the Worlds. Paramount Pictures , 2005.

Pintér, Károly. “The Analogical Alien: Constructing and Construing Extraterrestrial Invasion in Wells's ‘The War of the Worlds.’” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS), vol. 18, no. 1/2, 2012, pp. 133–149. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43488465.

Wells, H. G. War of the Worlds. New York: Harper & brothers. 1989. Google Books. Web. 20 January 2019.